


Mise en Abyme

by Everyforkedroad



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: CMBYN - Freeform, Canon Compliant, Collection of Vignettes, Domestic Fluff, Elio/Oliver - Freeform, Gen, LOTS OF SMUT TBH, M/M, Mise en abyme, Modern AU, New York, Oliver/Elio, Post Novel, Post-Canon, after the novel, but also fluff, elio x oliver - Freeform, frame story, growing together, m/m - Freeform, oliver x elio, other tags to follow, series of drabbles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-05-09 09:37:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14713619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Everyforkedroad/pseuds/Everyforkedroad
Summary: A collection of vignettes of Elio and Oliver's coming together after the events of the novel. Adheres to the novel's timeline but vignettes are posted in non-chronological order. Stories will alternate between Oliver and Elio's POV.I try to adhere to the details as presented in the novel but I may, from time to time, include some reference from the movie.Inspired by comments on one of my first drabbles, No Peaches, in which commenters encouraged to keep writing. So here goes!





	1. Amoretti

**Author's Note:**

> Elio composes. Oliver stares. Results in fluff, smut and poetry.

**Summer, 2004**

**Manhattan**

**Oliver's POV**

The summer rain fell in fat droplets, making a _pallunk_ sound when they landed on the metal of the fire escape. It struck me as otherworldly as I sat in the wide armchair Elio had recently purchased for me. I ran my hands along the maroon-colored, crushed leather, reveling in the tactile pleasure of his gift. To save my back from overexertion when I worked, scoring papers or drafting my academic writing, he’d said. He was a solicitous as a person as well as a lover - another quality that I was rediscovering after so many years apart.

Over the sound of rain came another, less repetitive litany of notes. Through the open door of my study, I had a perfect view of Elio bent over the piano, tapping on the keys. Each time something harmonious flowed from his long, elegant fingers, he paused to write out the notes on his score sheet. Elio. Caught in the act of creation. Altogether different from the young Elio I remembered, transcribing music that summer in Italy, his pen flowing across the paper, headphones wedged on his head like a blunt tiara.

Now, his hair fell forward in long waves which he pushed back from his forehead each time he paused to write. He sat shirtless and barefoot in nothing but jean shorts. Even with the air-conditioning, the humidity of summer in Manhattan crept into each crevice of the human body. It made Elio’s skin glow, smooth alabaster glistening over defined muscle, a male Galatea waking from marble.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his eyes still fixed on the sheet before him. His fingers returned to the keys, tapping an increasingly complex, woven melody that promised to become something sublime.

I glanced at my latest manuscript, a treatise on the pre-Socratic philosophers of Miletus, which lay all but abandoned on my lap. “Reading.”

“No, you’re not,” he retorted, scribbling the notes he’d played on the score sheet.

“Thinking, then.”

“About?”

“Private,” I replied, thrilling at our game.

“So you won’t tell me?”

“So I won’t tell you.”

“So he won’t tell me,” he repeated, as if explaining to someone else. He looked up then, his green eyes glittering and the spell we’d woven changed, amplifying. Fear and desire lurched through me, striking my belly like the pointed tip of a wooden skewer.

“You’re giving me that cruel, icy glare again.”

“There’s no cruelty in it, I promise.”

“But it’s cold.” He straightened, setting down his pencil. _“How comes it that my exceeding heat Is not allayed by his heart-frozen cold?_ ”

“Spencer,” I said in a hoarse whisper.

He nodded and stood, wiry frame unfurling from it’s perch on the bench, a sprinkle of fine hair dusting the muscles of his chest. His body had ripened over time, become bulkier, more defined. But he never lost the chiselled aspect of a young David. I wondered whose fingers beside mine had run the trajectory between those hairs and a frisson of jealousy exploded beneath my rib cage.  

“Now the gaze changes,” he whispered as he approached. “For a man who prides himself on playing cards so well, you have a terrible poker face.” He set aside the manuscript I held and straddled my thighs, his knees wedged in the cushion of the armchair on either side of me.  He ran his hands over my arms, fingers slipping beneath the boundary of my short sleeves. His skin was so close, if I flicked my tongue, I knew what I would find - salt and poplars mingled with the distant echoes of the sea.

“I wouldn’t win a hand against you now.”

“Not now, no,” he said, pressing his lips to a spot behind my jaw, just under my ear. I shivered. “But twenty-one years ago, you could have fleeced me for every _lira_ I owned. So well did your icy glare deceive me.”

“But you know now,” I searched for breath that had became scarce as he left kisses along my neck. Sweat sprung up on my forehead, my upper lip, the spot between my shoulder blades. “Don’t ever say you didn’t know.”

“I know.” He slid along my body, skillfully evading my attempts to capture his mouth. “See what I think of your ice, _cauboi_.” He pulled my t-shirt off and flung it away.

“It was never indifference, I told you that.”

He paused, eyes full of understanding, before sinking to the floor on his knees, his mouth hovering over a nipple before descending, drawing delicious circles with the tip of his tongue. He smiled at my reaction, the hiss that slipped out of me, then engulfed the tip, drawing it out until it pebbled. My fingers curled in his hair, the tips pressing against his damp scalp, where the occasional gray strand sprung forth, a reminder that while my heart had remained frozen in that summer in B, time had marched onwards, leaving its signs on both of our bodies. They broke my heart and I wanted to kiss each and every one away.

He arrived at the drawstring of my shorts, undoing the tie before sliding them down my thighs, my cock laying hard and aching against my belly. He took me in his mouth without ceremony or artifice. It was his way of staking a claim on me once again, a reminder that, while he was playful and teasing, on this matter above all others, there was no equivocation. I could hear the words whispered in his voice - _Mine and mine and mine again._

I went slack, all the blood in my body racing to my cock. He bobbed over it, his mouth and tongue slick and wet on me. When he sucked, his cheeks became hollow and I swept the hair from his face to watch myself disappear into his mouth.

He released me and slithered lower, capturing my sack and lavishing it with his now reddened lips. I gripped the arms of the chair, then balled my hands into fist, digging my nails into flesh in the hopes that pain would keep me from climaxing. He pulled back just as I was about to lose my tenuous control and crawled over my body, giving me the kiss I’d been aching for - long and deep until we had been reduced to two wet tongues, flailing and twisting about each other.

Finally, he broke away and slipped two fingers inside my mouth. “Suck on them,” he ordered. The air conditioning compressor had whirred to life, his words nearly carried away. But I was desperate for him now, and could count every harried breath he took. Obediently, I sucked on this fingers as he tugged my hip to the edge of the cushion, hiking my legs over the arms. He pulled his fingers out and slid down again, the wet digits working in time with his mouth to open me, make me ready for him. I moaned as his tongue invaded me and I drew my hands over my head now, gripping the top of the chair to keep from doing something mad, like tackling and taking him in one move.

“Don't stop,” I moaned as he worked me - tongue, fingers, tongue, fingers - until my balls tightened painfully.

“Wasn't planning on it,” he answered as he pulled away and rammed his shorts down, his cock springing out, corded and throbbing. He gave his palm a long, slow lick and stroked the tip of his cock before positioning himself at my entrance. With a gentleness that brought me to tears, he entered me, his eyes watching for discomfort, as if it were the first time he’d taken me. Maybe it was the first time, over and over, like lovers blessed and cursed to begin their love anew each day the sun rises.

The idea so aroused me that when he buried himself inside of me, I stayed him with my hand. I didn’t want to come yet, I didn’t want this delicious juxtaposition of nostalgia and newness to slide into something more mundane, as these things tended to do when time and habit had its way with us.

“Are you uncomfortable?” he asked, his hand sliding up my thigh. He quivered - it was an exertion for him to hold himself and wait for me but he did it and would do it indefinitely. For me.

“I don’t care. Come on. Finish me.”

He smirked, and began his dance, hips straining as he plunged into me. I took myself in hand and stroked as he pumped, the caress of his cock rocketing me higher and higher. I pulled him down for a kiss and he didn’t resist, filling my mouth in time with his cock thrusts. I was uncomfortable, bent in places my age resisted but I didn’t want it to end. I wanted him, balls deep, wanted him to come on me, his semen mixed on my skin with mine.

“Elio, Elio, Elio, Elio,” he repeated, the muscles of his throat corded as he neared and I pulled him down again, suctioning a spot at the juncture of his neck and shoulder, knowing full well I’d leave a mark.

“Oliver,” I growled. I couldn’t stop, tilting past my limits, and came in spurts that covered my stomach and chest. He groaned his name once more, a flush of pinking spreading beneath his freckles and across his cheeks. After one last, decisive thrust, he pulled out and exploded over me until we were both empty and full and heavy with satisfaction.

He leaned back on his haunches, catching his breath before picking up my t-shirt, wiping himself, than me. I struggled into place again, my back tight, my shoulders sore. When I was clean, he pulled me down onto the throw rug, my body sighing in relief at being freed from the contortion he’d made of my body.

“I’m too old for those kinds of gymnastics,” I murmured, wrapping myself around him.

“You’ve barely aged at all,” he answered.

“But I’m older. As you are.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“No, it doesn’t matter."  

We lapsed into silence. I listened to him as his breathing slowed, becoming even, though I knew he wasn’t sleeping. Our bodies cooled, the effect of the air conditioning resulting in the chill of dried sweat. I swept my fingers over the skin of his chest and stomach, splaying my hand over the muscles that twitched beneath.

“Spencer?” I asked.

He smiled, and I watched his profile morph to accommodate it. He was staggeringly beautiful and my heart ached with wonder at the way he was made.

“ _Amoretti_. The sonnet cycle. What can I say? I’ve exhausted all the love poetry in the romance languages.”

“Even Portuguese,” I chuckled, squeezing him to me.

“Even Portuguese. I’m now reduced to sitting at the foot of the English.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, unable to resist teasing him.

“You should be,” he turned towards me, his face suddenly serious. “You know I always say things in a way. You understand when I speak, don’t you? I’m running out of languages to say it to you.”

I nodded solemnly. “I do.”

The rain had stopped sometime during our revels and now the golden afternoon light brightened the room. It was another shade of gold, another kind of summer. But this - what lay nestled between us in the afterglow of our lovemaking, our word play, our contests to impress each other - this was still alive. Poetry was a poor balm for nostalgia and regret but the thing we kept coming back to, the thing we tried to say to each other and couldn’t find words to express, this would never change.

 

[ https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50271/amoretti-xxx-my-love-is-like-to-ice-and-i-to-fire ](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50271/amoretti-xxx-my-love-is-like-to-ice-and-i-to-fire)


	2. All The Love You Ever Get

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> " Ghosts lingered everywhere; in my bedroom, the orchard, between the trilling of cicadas and the hoots of owls at night. My grandfather. My father. Oliver.
> 
> Oliver.
> 
> He wasn’t a ghost, anymore, was he? He stood next to me, alive, made of flesh and bone, not of nostalgia and memory. The ghost spots had lost a specter who now walked beside me."
> 
> Oliver returns to B. after 20 years. Elio discovers much has changed between them, but some things will always be the same. Takes place directly after the events of the novel. Chapter 2 of Mise en Abyme

**All The Love You Ever Get**

**Elio’s POV**

**Summer, 2003, B.**

By mid-afternoon, we had climbed the steps to the top of San Giacomo’s belfry. The sea breeze gently buffeted the tower, lifting Oliver’s hair each time the wind gusted. The smooth cast of his tanned skin, sunspots and all, was evident in the light of the cloudless day, and the beginnings of summer highlights sparkled in his dark-blond hair. I faced out to the sea to keep from staring at him.

“It’s a four-day conference on classical studies. Could’ve been held on the New York campus.” He leaned on the stone ledge, gazing out at the cove below. The coastline stretched to the east toward San Remo and beyond, and to the west to Nice and the Côte d’Azur.

“Italians would say it’s _Una scusa per fa’ girare un po di quadrini_.”

Oliver smiled. “As a matter of fact.”

I inhaled the aroma of the sea. Palm trees blossomed along the hillside among poplars and bushes, green brushstrokes against the backdrop of the sky. I wasn’t so unsentimental that I couldn’t appreciate the appeal to those who were not immunized against its beauty.

When I was young, I didn’t always realize how lucky I was to spend summers and holidays here. Now that I was older, I recognized my good fortune but found it difficult to take the kind of pure pleasure I enjoyed then. Ghosts lingered everywhere; in my bedroom, the orchard, between the trilling of cicadas and the hoots of owls at night. My grandfather. My father. Oliver.

Oliver

He wasn’t a ghost, anymore, was he? He stood next to me, alive, made of flesh and bone, not of nostalgia and memory. The ghost spots had lost a specter who now walked beside me.

“I’m performing at the Menton Music Festival this year,” I said.

“What will you play?”

“You’ll never guess.”

“You mean…?”

I smiled, pausing for dramatic effect before I answered. “Bach. Capriccio in B Flat Major, among others.”

He laughed, a deep, resonant sound that carried over the cliff and floated out past the water, lingering in my ears long after he stopped. “I’d pay to listen to you play again.”

“Most would,” I said, not caring that I sounded insufferably smug. “But tonight, I’ll play it for free.”

He nodded, becoming serious. “I’d like that.”

Play Bach. That was one thing I could give him without guile.

I leaned through the opening in the belfry, reaching into the wind to savor the warmth it carried.

“Nothing’s changed,” Oliver said.

“Everything’s changed.” _My father’s gone and you are here, how could things be any more different?_

“You’re right. I meant---”

“I know what you meant,” I interjected to smooth over my brusque response. He nudged my shoulder, and I nudged him back, which led to playful poking and punches until we were both laughing.

“We always did think alike, you and I.” He leaned into me, shoulder to shoulder, to catch his breath. With the gentlest pressure, I rested my head against his chest until the temptation to throw my arms around him was too great to bear. We both pulled away, his face tilted down in contemplation of me, the wind sweeping his hair sideways. His gaze was not glacial, but bottomless and unfathomable. I could not guess his thoughts.

“Your father had a long talk with me when I first came back to B. during that Christmas. Before I got married.”

“I know. He never told me what you talked about.” I pressed myself into the stone wall behind me.

“He never told you?”

“He wouldn’t have if he thought you were speaking in confidence.”

“That sounds like him,” he said, his eyes becoming unfocused, as if he were staring off into that distant day and seeing my father, with all of his abstractions and stubborn wisdom.

“Did he offer life advice? Like how to be a good Jewish husband?” I added, swallowing back an unforeseen surge of bitterness that rose in my throat. I expected the ocean, so flat and calm, to split open and expose a monster or some rot hiding in its depths.

“I thought you’d forgiven me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive.”

He exhaled shakily before continuing. “He gave me advice, actually. Shared his _traviamento_. You remember when we first talked about that?”

I remembered the conversation well. My father had spoken of the different turns in life. Parallel lives from which some returned, and others did not. He’d never told me the specifics of his experience; I didn’t want to know and besides, I had a _traviamento_ of my own. My mind flew to that night on via Santa Maria dell' Anima and the kiss that still lived in the stones, the life that was right for me but I had failed to have. I nodded, overcome by the memory.

“I think I expected him to talk me out of it but no,” he paused thoughtfully. “In the end, he just said, ‘Marriage is always good.’”

“Marriage is always good,” I repeated.

“He worried about you, though he never said it outright.”

I wrinkled my nose at this. “I took it well enough.”

Oliver smiled now. “You took it like a stoic. And you turned out brilliantly for it, didn’t you? You’re famous. You didn’t pay for any of it after all.”

“Oliver, I never took you for a revisionist.”

If he was offended by my words, he masked it well. A surge of powerful emotion bubbled up from the depths of that winter. _Oh, but I did pay, Oliver. I longed for you, sometimes so much, I thought I’d claw my skin open and turn myself inside out if I didn’t have you with me, inside of me, that very second_. Soon, he’d say goodbye, turn around with his laptop and enormous duffle bag firmly in hand, slip into the taxi and be gone. I’d said my peace five years ago. This visit was a coda, as would be every encounter that came after. But he was here now. I resolved to dip another cotton swab in the bowl of happiness I’d been given and take a long sip before he left.

“My conference is only four days.”

“Doesn’t seem very long. You’ll be home in no time.”

“Home,” he muttered, but said no more. He rubbed his chin, which was supple and clean-shaven. I noticed his fingers and realized he didn’t have a ring on any of them. Had he ever worn his wedding band? I searched the memory of our last visit but failed to come up with a conclusive answer. I thought to ask but he was lost in his own thoughts. Inscrutable Oliver, wrapped in more layers than an aged conch shell. Calcifying, growing more marked with each year that passed.

We returned when the afternoon heat became less insistent. Oliver, exhausted from his trip, excused himself for a short nap, leaving me to my own resources. I wandered the property, visiting my father, the scorched and fallow field, the road that led to the plaza in B., hands sweeping over leaves and grasses, along walls and stones. Everything, from the smell of earth to the crunch of gravel under my shoes was a one-way ticket to that summer. I returned through the orchard and sat on the _orle of paradise_ , the soporific effect of walking, the sun’s heat and the emotional intensity of Oliver's proximity drove me to recline under the tree where he used to lay on his blanket, surrounded by his things. I dozed off to a vision of Oliver’s shoulders, the sound of his breathing in my ear, and the taste of salt on his fingertips.

*********

“Elio?”

I flew up out of a dream filled with well-being that was somehow connected to Oliver and opened my eyes to find his face hovering over mine.

“I must’ve fallen asleep,” I said, rubbing my eyes.

“So did I.” He leaned back, giving me room to sit up. He hissed when I cracked my neck. “That’s not good for you.”

“That’s right, you’re a doctor, aren’t you?” I teased, rubbing a spot on my back where a pebble had become wedged, and left an indentation that would most likely disappear within the hour. Wounds heal with time but in our memory, the pain persists.

“Come on, dinner’s probably ready,” I said, standing and offering my hand to help him up. When I gazed down at him, I was confronted, not with the Oliver who had arrived earlier that day, but the old Oliver, my friend, my brother, my lover, the one who once gazed at me with heavy-lidded eyes, mouth half-open, wordlessly imploring me for a kiss. The familiarity and precision of that expression provoked a delirium in me, compounded by the soft skin of his palm melting into mine as I pulled him to his feet. I caught sight of the pale underside of his forearm, remembering how much I loved running my lips over the untanned skin of his body and turned abruptly away, for fear he’d read the want in my face.

We stumbled to the dinner table like two drunks returning from a bender. Mafalda and my mother were arranging the last of the dinnerware.

“Oliver, sit here,” my mother said, placing him at the head of the table, to the left of me and opposite my father’s seat. He did as he was told, with an air of bewilderment as if he’d forgotten where he was and what he was expected to do.

“ _Ma guarda questo muvi star_ ,” Mafalda beamed, fussing over _Signor Ulliva_.

“ _Non più un muvi star_ ,” he answered, returning to himself and basking in her compliment like a homeless hound.

“ _Sei sempre bello, non e’ vero, Elio_?”

I turned to him, his face still suffused with the echo of that expression of earlier, full of supplication. He reminded me of the symmetrical perfection of _Germanicus,_ the statue de Marcellus I once saw in the Louvre.

 _“E’ vero. Sei rimasto sempre stupendo,_ I choked out before toying the napkin near my plate. I felt his eyes on me and thought, if Mafalda had ever needed a sign, we had given it to her, pulsing and insistent between the two of us. I was grateful to my mother, who at that very moment asked about his family.

“The boys are doing very well, thank you. One started Princeton this year and the other is finishing up high school.”  He said these things without looking at me, as if I could be offended by his pride in his children. I made a point of asking about their studies, what sports and hobbies they enjoyed, as if to say, _See, all is forgiven. No hard feelings_.

He shifted his legs as my mother spoke  and I half expected the soft ball of his foot to invade my space. I unconsciously positioned my foot the way I once did when we played this game. It didn’t happen, though there was a light brush, the accidental thump of his shoe against mine. I was certain it was nothing more than a shift in position, a casual motion he did not repeat.

After, while Mafalda collected the dishes, we retired to the sitting room where I took my place at the piano. My mother, in her astute way, explained that she would help Mafalda and then go directly to her room. She kissed Oliver, smoothing his hair down the way she always did mine before leaving us alone.

I fidgeted with the stool, adjusting it though I’d played comfortably that very morning. Oliver, who stared out into the evening through the open window, turned and lifted the upholstered wooden chair from the writing table and set it next to me, so close, I could brush his elbow with mine. I said nothing, only nodding once before positioning my hands over the keys.

I played the entire score, from the tender cadence of the first movement through the passionate second and third. But I knew exactly which refrain in the piece had once stirred him and when I played it, I wrapped my longing around it and sent it to him as a little gift. Not in flirtation – the time for that had passed. I sent it to him in the spirit of gratitude that I had, for a very short time, been able to give him the most beautiful, pure part of me, which he accepted without reservation, returning it to me, the same way we spoke each other’s names. Clumsy and finite, the strains of that intimacy echoed throughout my life.

When I played it a second time, I extended the piece, first with a joyous tempo, then slowly, almost furtively, like clasping a lover’s hand as it is slowly pulled away. Just one last cadenza, one last kiss on the knuckles before you hide your hand, your heart, your life from me. One last caress until our final goodbye, when there will be nothing left in all the world to say to one another and maybe, if the benevolence of the universe still held, the image of your face would be the last thing I see.

“You changed it,” he said, his voice low though there was no one around to hear us.

“I did.”

He rubbed his hands along the length of his pants. “And who were you channeling this time?”

“No one. It was my own modification. Mine alone, meant only for you.”

I glanced toward him but he didn’t meet my gaze.

*********

After Oliver left, my mother and I settled into the task of going through my father’s documents. He was meticulous in the organization of his academic things, but there were still papers to sort and correspondence to answer. My father had spent most of his life in the pursuit of his academic interests as well as collecting people and connections of every kind, all of whom still esteemed his kindness and erudition and would continue to reach out to us long after summer had ended. My grief, which waxed and waned like a poorly tended fire, was stoked and fed again by the intersection of other people’s mourning - my mother’s, Mafalda’s, of course, but also his colleagues, who still called us or sent letters of condolences. Over the next few days, the emotional variances exhausted me. In the miasma of on again/off again melancholy, the ache of Oliver’s absence receded in intensity to that of an old injury.

But sleep brought dreams not unlike those I had when I was first in the grip of passion for him, except they possessed an additional layer. In them, I was happy. No, nothing so trite. It was more than happiness. It felt like another homecoming. In my dreams, all was right in the world. We spoke to each other in the same way, still understood each other. We ignored the tangents and intersections we might not be able to cross in real life, the ones that had been created after our time together, belonging to the life we’d built with others. This dream, more than anything else, made his absence both magical and unbearable. In the most trying moments, I wanted only to get lost in those dreams and forget everything else.

His visit provided one bright spot. It had introduced the possibility of friendship in the present tense, a way to inhabit a mutual existence not bound by the limits of the past. But the memory of Rome, and that kiss against the wall along via Santa Maria dell’Anima had long acquainted me with another possibility. We could have been something more, something magnificent, Oliver and I, and there would always be a part of me that would not resign itself to simply being a spectator in the parallel lives we lived now.

Three days after Oliver’s departure, I leaned on the balcony railing outside my bedroom window, smoking my first cigarette in ten years. I stared unseeing at the tree-lined drive and only belatedly registered the approach of a taxi winding up the path. Visitors came and went all the time, so it made no great impression on me to see yet another unexpected guest arrive to pay their respects or some tourist who’d heard of the house and wished for a glance around the place, if we would be so kind.

The car stopped beneath my window. I didn’t recognize the figure that unfolded from the passenger side until he stretched to his full height, tall and golden as those California boys that figured so prominently on popular television shows. I gripped the railing when he looked up, blue eyes as deep as the sea. I had once called him _usurper,_ and I hadn’t been wrong. He had usurped my room. My heart. My life.

With as much decorum as I could muster, I jogged down the stone stairs and met him just as he set his duffel bag down in the foyer, in the identical spot where he’d left it so many years before.

“You probably think I’ve lost my mind,” he said by way of introduction.

“You’ve certainly lost your way. What about your conference?”

“I have to go back - I’m presenting a paper tomorrow.”

He shifted on his feet, his position awkward and unsure. He wore a cream-colored, seersucker suit, the jacket of which hung over his arm. His white linen shirt was rolled up at the sleeves, top button undone. He appeared at once scholarly and dashing.

“I had the idea that you might want to attend the presentation. There’s a dinner afterwards. Nothing fancy but a lot of my colleagues knew your father. You’d be...welcome.”

I frowned. “Your colleagues? You came all the way back here in person just to invite me to dinner because of your colleagues?”

“Don’t be a goose. You know why I came back.”

Oliver’s held my gaze in the way that once struck me as cruel. But I knew better now. It was the look of a man who was too shy, too used to dissimulating behind his insouciance, too unaccustomed to vulnerability. It said, _this is who I am, this is how I’m made, and I belong to you, if you’ll have me_.

“Was it the Bach?” I asked, clasping both hands to keep them from shaking.

He shook his head. “No. It’s always been, since day one. Since the first time you blushed.”

I nodded, confused by everything and yet, under further consideration, it all seemed so inevitable. My dreams had not been a fantasy, but a premonition.

“So, will you come with me?”

I picked up his bag with one hand and rested the other on his shoulder. He covered my hand with his and squeezed, clinging to my fingers.

“I’ll go with you,” I said, tugging his hand as I lead him upstairs to my room. His room. Our room.

_Elio, Elio, Elio, I would go anywhere with you._

 *****

 _Una scusa per fa’ girare un po di quadrini  -_  "An excuse to circulate money."

 _Ma guarda questo muvi star -_ "Look at this movie star."

 _Non più un muvi star -_ "Not a movie star anymore."

 _Sei sempre bello, non e’ vero, Elio_? - "You're always handsome, isn't that true, Elio."

 _E’ vero. Sei rimasto sempre stupendo -_ "It's true. You remain stupendous."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N
> 
> So, a couple of things.
> 
> To write this drabble with any kind of authenticity, I had to give myself a mini-lesson on music structure. After reading Andante and Rondo by ghostcat3000 and Daring to Desire You by Eva_Marlowe, I realized if I wanted to write something true to Oliver and Elio, I’d have to become learned with the literature and music that characterizes the CMBYN aesthetic. So I’ve built my reading and playlists to do right by my boys. And I get a little culture in the meantime!
> 
> The title of this one-shot comes from Snow Patrol’s song, What If This Is All The Love You Ever Get? At this stage of their lives, this song seems fitting. We’ll get more details about what has happened before this point as the vignettes progress.
> 
> Finally, I named this story Mise en Abyme (literally, placed in the abyss) which refers to the literary act of mirroring  or repeating elements. The idea was that the vignettes would each be self-contained and out of order but they would mirror one another thematically and be part of the same universe. I have never really worked without a classic story structure before and while I do have one in mind that would suit this particular story, I won’t share it until later, in case it doesn’t work, then I can claim total randomness without disappointing anyone :).
> 
> Thank you for reading and supporting this story. I love your feedback - constructive or otherwise - and try to answer all messages. I don't have a beta for this story. If you're interested, please leave a note in the comments or message me on my tumblr (www.everyforkedroad.tumblr.com).
> 
> You can check my banners for each chapter of this story on my tumblr page, https://everyforkedroad.tumblr.com/post/174259681108/mise-en-abyme-chapter-2-all-the-love-you-ever
> 
> E


	3. Contra la Corriente (Against the Current)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver is back in New York but getting over Elio is harder than he ever imagined. The music from his neighbor's downstairs apartment doesn't help matters any.
> 
> (Remembered smut, angst and salsa - so sorry for the insane combination)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N at the end

**Contra la Corriente**

 

**Oliver’s POV**

 

**September, 1983 - October, 1997**

 

_I hid in the bushes along the west wall of the villa. The Perlman’s sat in the shade, smoking cigarettes, newspapers in hand, occasionally interrupting the other to read an interesting article aloud. Their backs faced me, which was a relief, though they weren’t far enough away for me to be completely safe from discovery. I heard Elio’s voice as he spoke to Mafalda inside, followed by the clap-clap of his white Keds on the marble floor before he stepped outside. Listening for the crunch of gravel beneath his feet, I shrank back into the leaves and flowers, their smell thick and heady. I watched him crane his head, searching beyond where his parents sat and I knew he was looking for me._

 

_When he walked by, I reached out and pulled him into the thick bushes. He let out a loud whoop which I covered with my mouth. I still tasted the semifreddo on his tongue and devoured it, together with the distinct flavor of him. He stiffened in shock but quickly melted, returning my kiss, ardor for ardor. My hands shot down into his pants and gripped his apricot, as he’d taken to calling my ass, and squeezed, pulling him up against me, eliciting a low growl from him._

 

_I pulled back just enough to whisper, “Fuck me, Oliver.”_

 

_Plundering his mouth again, it was several moments before I let him breath long enough to answer, “Right now?”_

 

_“Right now.” God, if he didn’t hurry up, I’d take him right up against the wall, not 100 feet from his parents, the syrupy sweetness of those flowers christening us both as we defiled each other. The thought of it made my balls seize up._

 

_We continued to kiss each other sloppily, all saliva and plump, swollen lips until he pushed me away. His eyes heavy and dark, he clasped my hand, pulling me along the path to the side door where we navigated the space as quietly as our desperate, lust-filled bodies allowed, in the hopes of avoiding Mafalda’s sharp eye and tongue._

 

_The door barely closed behind us before we were undressed and I was inside of him, the muscles of his thighs clenched around my waist as I rode him hard. I wouldn’t last very long - I’d been desperate for him since first thing in the morning, when I’d been thwarted by the delivery of documents from the university that needed immediate sorting. But the afternoon was young and there’d be time enough to take him as slowly as I liked. For today, at least, there was time enough for all the things I wanted to do..._

 

I sat up suddenly, drenched in a sheen of sweat that was not entirely the result of the leftover summer heat. I glanced at the rumpled bed sheets, books and papers strewn haphazardly on the mattress. The latin music from the apartment downstairs had woken me, which provoked an irrational rage. I crawled out of bed and onto the fire escape of my 4th floor apartment on 114th Street, hoping to find relief from my dreams by shocking myself with the reality that I was here, in Manhattan and no longer in B. I reminded myself that beyond Frederick Douglass Boulevard was Morningside Park and further on, the South Lawn of Columbia University - all the signposts of my current life. I was home and there was no sense pretending otherwise.

 

I scraped my week-old scruff, the combination of beard and humidity making my skin itch. I had successfully dodged almost everyone I knew for the entire month since I’d returned from Italy, aside from a late lunch upon my arrival and forced conversations with my roommate, Clive. I used a variety of subterfuges, claiming jetlag, the impending deadline to submit my manuscript, and an imaginary illness resulting from exhaustion. The irony of the last excuse was not lost on me. What kept me to myself was, in fact, an ailment, but it was one of the heart and soul, and not of the body.

 

I missed Elio, and I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to pull off this life-ever-after without him.

 

Despite the conscious and unconscious efforts to steer my thoughts away from him, the memory of him overtook me, during waking or sleeping, like the light of a watchtower that blinks and disappears through the mist of a dark, foggy sea. With each sighting, or rememberance, came an acute reality that I tried and failed to push away - I didn’t know if or when I’d ever see him again.

 

Accepting that Elio would not be with me in the foreseeable future made me feel like I did when I was sick as a child - feverish, helpless, forced to depend on externals, like my parents or medications, because I was powerless to be attend to my own illness. Some infantile part of me believed that I would, in some prosaic future, be with him again and I toyed with every scheme imaginable to make it so.

 

Yet a pernicious part of me, the one that spun my disguises and measured people, the part that helped me calculate how much to share, how much to keep to myself - that part reminded me of all the conditions that prohibited me from ever being with Elio. Distance and age were the most obvious. But my nascent professional career in the conservative ranks of academia might be truncated if it was revealed that I had had an affair with a seventeen year-old Italian boy. There were also my parents to consider, and the impact of their son bringing home a man as his partner. They were nothing like the Perlmans and would disown me without question.

 

So many reasons not to hope for what I wanted and even more reasons to hide away from thinking of it.

 

The infernal racket coming from my third-floor neighbor’s apartment pummelled me again. Assaulted by the continuous stream of latin music, and seated on the fire escape in a mood that was becoming fouler by the moment, I admitted the very realistic possibility that I could commit an act of violence.  

 

I leapt up, stepping through my own window and landing in my bedroom again. Tossing on a t-shirt, I made it through my apartment in long strides, slamming the door shut behind me and taking to the stairs. I soon found myself in front of apartment 3B, rapping loudly over the chaos inside.

 

A short, man of about sixty opened the door. His hair was dark brown and cropped close to his head around a widow’s peak. It wasn’t exactly curly, but it had been styled in waves and rolled like the sea over his head. He possessed a high forehead across which ran deep furrows, perhaps from a lifetime of frowning or laughing - I had no way of knowing. At the moment, his brown eyes twinkled and I assumed that he’d probably had a few drinks. I drew myself to my full height and gave him a stern look.

 

“I’m your neighbor upstairs,” I began but he broke into a bright smile, revealing a row of straight, teeth with the exception of a missing canine on the right side.

 

“I know you!” He said in a thick, Spanish accent. “Hey, you been gone for awhile. I thought you moved out---” he said but a woman’s voice interrupted him from somewhere behind him

 

_“¿Quién es, Felipe? ¿Llegó Nilsa?”_

 

“ _Es el muchacho de arriba._ _El estudiante. Prepárale un plato ahí, mami_ ,” Stepping aside, he directed his next comments to me. “It’s my granddaughter’s birthday. Come inside. My wife will make you a plate.”

 

My anger was still white hot and I was ready to make him pay for the music, my aching heart, everything that was wrong with my life. “I didn’t come to socialize. I’m here about the music. You can’t play that music---”

 

“The music’s loud tonight, you’re right. I’ll tell my son to turn it down. Come, come,” he said in a placating voice like one would use with a child. He stretched a hand out, placing it on my arm. I hesitated - I had to get back to work, or get back to pretending to work and didn’t have time to dawdle. However, the warmth and humor of his face reminded me of Mr. Perlman in the quiet way he had of handling someone like me, a person who had clearly been itching for a fight. His paternal hand on my skin soothed me, and I found my anger had all but evaporated.

 

The thumping of drums and the whistle of the trombones from the current track rolled over me, together with the smell of herbs and spices in the warm air. The promise of a temporary reprieve from my ever more compulsive thoughts of Italy sealed the decision and I stepped inside.

 

Balloons festooned the walls and tables while children ran under foot, racing across the corridor to get to from one room to another. Adults milled among the children, oblivious to their game play, or leaned against walls and furniture, drinks in hand, talking above the music which came from a stereo in the living room. All the windows were open, fans and a small ac unit moving air throughout the apartment, creating circulation so the apartment was neither stagnant nor unbreathable. This also accounted for how I was able to hear the music so well in my apartment upstairs.

 

We approached a tall young man of about my age with a dark, olive complexion like the gentleman beside me. He lay sprawled on a loveseat, foot swaying to the beat of a song where a woman’s husky voice fell out from the speakers. He was oblivious to the conversation around him, and the way he straightened from his seat, all slender legs and gangliness, reminded me so much of Elio, I began to second-guess my decision to stay.

 

“ _Baja la música, por favor_ ,” The older gentleman admonished him.

 

The young man looked up at his father, then at me, before leaning forward to lower the music. It was still loud but at least now I wouldn’t have the bass pounding in my temples when I tried - and failed - to do my work.

 

“Thank you,” I said to both.

 

“No problem. I’m Felipe, by the way, and this is my son, Manuel.”

 

“Oliver,” I offered, shaking his hand. His palm was calloused but his grip warm and firm. His face was sharper than his father’s, possessing lines that would bend to anger at a moment’s notice, but he didn’t appear to resent me for my complaint. He rearranged his legs so the space next to him was free.

 

“Sit,” he said, clipped and demanding and I complied.

 

“Really, I just came to---” I started but Felipe stayed me with his hand.

 

“I know. But my wife always cooks too much and, anyway, we never have a chance to meet.”

 

“I don’t want to be a bother…”

 

“You’re not.”  Felipe glanced down at my chest. “Can you eat pork?”

 

I followed his gaze, remembering the Star of David, and caressed it, a brief vision of Elio’s lips curled around it flashing through my mind. “I’m not as devout as I should be.”

 

This provoked a chuckle from the young man next to me, but it lacked meanness. “I’m Catholic but I’m not very devout either.”

 

“Shh,” Felipe hissed at Manuel. “You young people. _Nene_ , get Oliver something to drink.”

 

I moved again to protest but Manuel shrugged it off and pulled a beer from a cooler behind him. “Really, you’re not bothering.” He handed it to me as his father drifted off. “Sorry about the music.”

 

I nodded gratefully, taking a long drag from the beer. “I’m finishing up my thesis and sometimes the noise makes it hard to concentrate on my work.”

 

Manuel nodded. His hair had a softer, less wiry texture than his father’s, the longish waves hanging down to his neck. The light filtering in from the window made a kaleidoscope of browns and ambers sparkle though the strands and for a mad moment, I was standing behind Elio, his back pressed to my chest, my nose buried in his thick curls. We had stolen hundreds of those caresses and kisses in those last weeks together, almost too many for the short time we had together, and yet they could never, would never be enough for the long stretch of years would now lay before Elio and me. I looked away from Manuel and stared down into the beer bottle instead.

 

“I’m studying music. Well, not formally,” he said, and I only just caught the slight accent that so heavily tinged his father’s words. “I play for an underground freestyle band. That’s why I have the music going all the time.”

 

“I have..a...friend…” I shook my head, clearing it. “My friend, he is a kind of prodigy with the piano. He transcribes music and I think,” I swallowed hard. “I think he’s going to be really big one day.”

 

Manuel stared at me, his deep-set eyes making him appear as if he were penetrating every one of my secrets and collecting them to himself. I shifted uncomfortably, wondering why I was here, why I didn’t just get up and leave. He broke off his gaze just as I was about to stand and offered me a cigarette, which I accepted before lighting one for himself.

 

“You got faith in your friend. That’s the most important thing. My dad works in the lunchroom down at PS #16 but he composes and plays every night. He has my back, you know? He believes in me.” He blew a puff of smoke towards the open window before rummaging in a bag next to him, pulling out a stack of cassettes. “You don’t know too much about Caribbean music, do you? Check this out.”

 

For the next hour, I ate, drank, and got an abbreviated history of latin-american music, including samples from his cassette deck. He rattled off names I’d never heard of before, like Tito Puentes, Hector Lavoe and Ruben Blades. Other people at the party slowly gathered around to listen to Manuel, correcting him if he got something wrong, like the year El Gran Combo published a particular song, or sometimes suggesting music for me to listen to. They argued, then danced and there was even an attempt by an old aunt to teach me something called a _merengue_ , claiming not even a _gringo_ could mess up the steps.  And as the beer flowed and the music thumped, I thought of another room, in another country, featuring another kind of music, another passion that dared to live far from me. I ached thinking of it and wondered if a day would ever come that even the strangest associations wouldn’t remind me of that summer in Italy.

 

Night fell without my realizing it, the apartment slowly emptying out. I shifted unsteadily, the beer having worked it’s magic, rendering me drunk, but not completely wasted. Manuel watched me again with that stare that made me squirm and I thought I might not be the only one who’d had too much to drink.

 

“You got a story to tell,” he said finally, pointing at me with the finger of the hand that was wrapped around the neck of a bottle of Dos Equis. “You’re half here, half there, you feel me?”

 

I snorted, shaking my head. “Don’t we all.”

 

“Don’t front. Every time I say something or you hear something, you get all sentimental. Who is she?”

 

I glanced over at him, wondering why his words were making me feel weak. I was a master of pretending, of being something I wasn’t. Where were all my hiding places tonight? Had it been the music? The strangeness of sitting in an apartment full of Puerto Ricans, listening to a language I couldn’t speak, eating food I shouldn’t eat, taking my fill of music that, until now, had all sounded the same to me, but would forever be differentiated by names like _salsa, merengue, bachata_ and _rumba_? Was it the way his eyes promised not to judge, eyes like Elio’s, not in color but in the way it absorbed the world and promised, with a twist and a change, to deliver it back as something universal, something beautiful?

 

“He. It’s a he. He’s young, much too young. And too far away.”

 

“Ah, damn.” He took a long drag from his cigarette, blowing the smoke out of his nose. “How far is too far away?”

 

“Like, all-the-way-on-the-other-side-of-the-world far away.” I downed the rest of my beer, another one materializing almost instantly.

 

“That’s where you were all summer. I’m over here playing Celia Cruz and what you really need is José José. You know, some of that sentimental music, the kind that makes you want to smoke ten blunts and drink a liter of Bacardi.”

 

I chuckled. “I’m miserable enough, thank you.”

 

He opened another beer for himself, taking a long draught. “No chance between you two, then?”

 

I looked up at the ceiling, just now noticing the water stain in the corner, wondering if I’d had anything to do with it. “The thing is, he’s young. I don’t...I don’t want to ruin him. Plus my family is conservative and my career...I keep turning it over in my head and nothing comes up.”

 

“And getting over him is not an option.”

 

I chuckled bitterly. “Not a chance. I try and try to forget him but It’s like jumping in a river and swimming against the current.”

 

He nodded, absorbing my words. “Why are you trying to forget him, though? Don’t get offended but that’s what’s wrong with you Americans. You’re too busy trying not to let things hurt you that you lose the ability to feel things. _Pedazos de leña_ , pieces of wood is what my mother calls you. Yo, listen to this,” he pulled out a cassette and played, the room filling with the mournful tones of man. It was so vivid, I thought I heard tears in his voice. “This cat already sold 4 million albums and he only just released it this year. The whole album is just him crying over something. And we eat that shit up. Because pain and suffering is also a part of life, man.”

 

I bit my lip. There was no way in hell I was going to cry in front of him. “But I’m not doing too well, you know?”

 

“If this kid is as important as you say he is, than you _shouldn’t_ be doing well. And that’s okay too. Don’t try so hard to forget. Just go with it. Get fucked up. Cry a little. That shit’s good for you.”

 

I smiled, and for the first time in awhile, it felt real. “You’re a smart guy, you know that?”

 

He shoved my shoulder, and another glancing memory of wrestling Elio in Rome flashed through my mind. This time, I didn’t push it away, but let the feeling of joy I’d experienced on that trip settle over me.

 

“Not as smart as you, Prof.” He laughed, bopping slightly to his own joke.

 

I leaned my head back against the seat. The alcohol made the room swim. “Listen, when’s your next gig?”

 

“Studio 58, next Friday night.” Manuel rummaged in his pocket, nearly dropping his cigarette on his pants. I took it out of his hand and smoked it, having given up any pretense of formality an hour ago. He handed me a laminated card with the name of the club in bold, colorful graffiti. “Stop by. Bring some friends. Do they…?”

  
“No, nobody knows about him. I don’t know how I had the moxy to tell you.”

 

Manuel shrugged. “Music, booze, my pretty face,” he laughed, running a hand through his hair. “Sometimes, it’s just easier to talk to a stranger.” He stood when I did, clapping me on the back. He turned out to be much shorter than I thought. “Imma write a song about you. What do you think of that?”

 

“As long as it doesn’t sound like that,” I indicated with my head where the sad man was still belting out his misery. “I like the stuff with a beat, even if the singer is dying inside.”

 

“Done. It might take awhile but when I make it big, I’ll give you a signed record and you’ll remember tonight.” He walked me half way out to the landing, shaking my hand and watching as I wobbled my way up to my apartment.

 

I went to Manuel’s next gig, and several ones after that. He invited me to his apartment when he started to make enough money to afford one and let me hang out when he switched from freestyle to salsa. He was the only one I could talk to about Elio on the few occasions he asked, as if he was afraid that, by poking that wound too much, I might bleed uncontrollably until I shrivelled up. After a few months, he signed on with a record label as a songwriter and I saw him less and less as he traveled for his music. By that time, I’d long married Miriam, my on-again, off-again girlfriend. I’d broken the news to Elio, and ended, once and for all, every chance I could have had with him. I still kept up with every detail of his career, his life a confirmation of my all my predictions. He became successful and well-respected composer and pianist.

 

I still dreamed of Elio, though the dreams came and went sporadically, sometimes disappearing for months on end. But all it took was a reference to Celan, the aroma of coffee in the afternoon, the last strains of Bach on the National Public Radio and Elio would appear, like a jinn from the vapor of an abandoned lamp, to torment me with the life I could never have.

 

It came in the mail, finally, in the fall of 1997. A gorgeously wrough LP, my now bespectacled friend staring out from the cover beneath the title, ripped right from from the dialogue of that night we’d spoken. On the back was his signature and a note:

 

_Like I promised. Because we all have a story to tell._

_Thank you for the title track._

_Manuel_

 

Miriam was at her mother’s with the boys for the week, leaving me alone with my memories in our house in New England. I prepared a gin from the Blue Sapphire in my bar instead of a Dos Equis. And when I opened the window to my study, it was the hoot of owls that greeted me, not the strains of Luis Miguel from a chaotic NYC neighborhood.  I’d learned Spanish by then for a comparative literature study I’d grown interested in, though I doubted how well I’d be able to understand what was being sung. I slipped the LP onto the turntable and leaned back into my chair.

 

Suddenly I was back in that apartment, sweating and desperate for something I couldn’t have. The music had ranged around me in defiance of my misery, the heat suffocating me, my heartbreak choking me. I was back on Manuel’s sofa, breathing in his cigarettes, learning that pain and loss were as necessary as love and joy, and to not deny it, but embrace it, go through it to get through it instead of killing it, and in the process, killing the emotions that had made me feel most alive.

 

Listening to the lonely strains of the guitar and synthesizer, I realized I didn’t need to know the language to understand the sentiments that gave form to the absence that had lived in my heart all of these years. As the beat became more complex, the strains of longing wove through, penetrating, joining the secret places I’d kept under lock and key, the places where Elio’s face, his voice, the smell and taste of him existed. My dreams were proof that I would never be able to get away from the way I felt for Elio.

 

Fourteen years. All I could think of was that day on Monet’s Berm, the day we’d both taken those first steps towards each other. I kept coming back to the words _Cor Cordium._ Heart of hearts. As the strains of the song faded away, I knew I could not die with this in my heart. I would make it concrete, write it somewhere, perhaps on the card I’d taken from his room, and one day, either give it to him myself or, if life was unkind, have it delivered to him. I would find a way to tell him, share those words that were the truest thing I could ever said to another human being. He'd know I hadn’t killed any of it.

He’d know that I never forgot.

 

_**fin** _

 

_¿Quién es, Felipe? ¿Llegó Nilsa?  (Who is it? Did Nilsa arrive?)_

_Es el muchacho de arriba. _El estudiante. Prepárale un plato ahí, mami. (The kid from upstairs. The student. Fix him a plate there, mami)__

__Baja la música, por favor (Lower the music, please)_ _

__Nene (Little one - term of endearment)_ _

_Pedazos de leña (pieces of wood)_

 

**A/N note:**

 

This entire drabble was born of a small, unremarkable passage in Aciman’s novel:

 

_“It was after dinner when the phone rang. Oliver had arrived safely. Yes, in New York. Yes, same apartment, same people, same noise - unfortunately, the same music streaming from outside the window - you could hear it now. He put the receiver out the window and allowed us to get a flavor of the Hispanic rhythms of New York. One Hundred and Fourteenth Street, he said.”_

 

This was a particularly important decade in the history of Latin-American music, in particular the Afro-Caribbean music scene in NYC. I imagined the freestyle, latin jazz and salsa musicians making everyone crazy (or making everyone dance) as they worked in this feverish period of intense creativity. There was a wonderful explosion of Mexican singers, among whom are mentioned here (Jose Jose and Juan Gabriel). A decade later would see the rise of the likes of Ana Gabriel, La India, Chayanne and Marc Anthony. I simply couldn’t resist this tiny intersection between a story I love so much and this moment in music history.

 

A note about Marc Anthony - in 1983, he was only 15 and would not rise to prominence for another ten years. However, he is the model for Manuel in this drabble (Marc Anthony’s father actually was named Felipe and he was a musician as well as a cafeteria worker in the NY public school system). In addition, Marc Anthony’s album, **_Contra La Corriente_** _,_ was published in 1997 and the title song is the one I had in mind when I imagined Manuel writing a song inspired by Oliver’s experience. (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RVUCoGRJzI>)

 

Banner for this chapter: <https://everyforkedroad.tumblr.com/post/174575240908/mise-en-abyme-chapter-3-contra-la-corriente>

 

When I say this chapter is an indulgence, I mean it. I wanted to give space to the music tradition that so marked my own upbringing.

 

The next chapter will post by the next weekend and will be a follow-up to _All The Love You Ever Get_ , since I had a few friends express an interest in what happens between Elio and Oliver in Menton. After that, I might be slow to update because I’m going on vacation to Europe for six weeks and won't be able to write as much as I’d like. I ask only for your patience - I’ll try to update as regularly as I can :).

 


	4. All The Love You Ever Get Pt. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I rubbed water from my face. “How long are you staying?”
> 
> He glanced up at the sky, the sun forcing him to squint, exposing the elegant crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. 
> 
> “Two weeks, for now.”
> 
> I made a mental calculation, not intending to be fatuous, but wanting, more than anything, to clarify the issue.
> 
> “One day here, four days at the convention,” I added quickly when he glanced down at me, eyebrow raised. “ What of the other nine days?”
> 
> His face lost the implacable bravado of a few moments ago before resuming with the same tone he used whenever he said, “Later,” or “Try again,” or “Maybe just for a little while.”
> 
> “I suppose it depends on things.”
> 
> “What things?”
> 
> He chuckled, his confidence flickering. “It depends on you.”
> 
> *****
> 
> Oliver returns to B. after 20 years. Elio discovers much has changed between them, but some things will always be the same. Continuation of Chapter 2, All The Love You Ever Get. I strongly recommend reading/rereading that chapter before embarking on this one.

**Elio’s POV**

**Summer, 2003, B.**

 

Oliver didn’t let my hand go, even after we stepped through the threshold of my room. A fly buzzed around my head but I couldn’t swat it. The hand that wasn’t captured in his was occupied holding his bag. I dropped the heavy duffle but found it difficult to make eye contact. Instead, I scanned the room he’d occupied only a few days before as if I could see it through his eyes - books piled on the desk, knick-knacks perched on shelves, a motley collection of pictures on the wall. Did he remember the spot where the post-card he’d taken once hung? Of course, of course he did. He’d already proven he’d remembered five years earlier. But that knowledge was not enough to banish the hundreds of doubts that crowded me.

 

I’d lived on calcified memories for far too long when it came to Oliver, a habit I’d have to work hard to break.

 

I finally risked a glance at him. His lips were pressed together and I wondered if his blood galloped in a rush of thunder like mine.

 

“Sit down,” I released his hand to indicate the bed.

 

He did as he was told with a meekness that was unlike the Oliver who’d brashly appeared on my drive and told me he’d come back for me. I wracked my brain for some way to bring down the feverish pitch of our feelings and remembered something I’d promised him, something that had been forgotten in the hike to San Giacomo’s belfry and the music of his earlier visit. I rummaged in my closet, finding the Ziplock bag and handed it to him.

 

“Last time you were here, I promised to show you something but the hours got away from me and you left.”

 

Oliver glanced down, his fingers running along the plastic zipper before pulling the bag open. When he took out the contents, he laughed in short gasps.

 

“Billowy?” he smiled, bringing the shirt to his nose. He’s nostrils flared, twitching comically.

 

“Don’t ask me if I washed it. That would only expose me for the sentimentalist that I am,” I said.

 

He gripped the shirt, burying his face in it and held it there for several moments. His bobbing shoulders and sob-like heaves disarmed me and I sank onto the mattress to wrap my arm around his shoulder. He lowered the shirt, his face dry but stricken.

 

“If you’re a sentimentalist, then I’m a sap,” he answered through a forced smile. His face was so close, his breath fanned over my chin, hot and tinged with the scent of coffee. I could easily kiss him if I leaned only a few centimeters forward but instead, I savored his proximity, demanding nothing from him. Ever more impatient than me, he instead leaned forward, toppling like a felled oak to press his forehead to mine.

 

“I’ll admit, you caught me off guard,” I said at length.

 

He pulled back, less overcome, a bit of his old confidence returning. “Let’s go swimming like we used to.”

 

I nodded. “Give me a minute and I’ll change.”

 

I opened the door to the bathroom, glancing back to find him already undoing the belt of his pants. He looked up at me, giving me the briefest of smiles, but didn’t pause as he pulled the shirt out of his pants. I smirked when his hands flew over the buttons, undoing each while his eyes dared me to stay. I nearly snatched his invitation but caution and a surge of good sense kept me in place. What a reversal! It would be up to me to be good.

 

On the way out, we let Mafalda know that Oliver would be staying on another night, news she greeted with a certain knowing look. With that blessing, we foreswore the _orle of paradise_ , opting instead to descend on the beach. Oliver paused before the panorama, the one which had always prompted him to open his balcony doors. It now lay sprawled before him, uninterrupted by distance or the tops of trees.

 

“It’s always beautiful here,” he whispered.

 

 _You're beautiful, Oliver,_ I thought with a ferocity that should have been heard for fifty kilometers but thankfully remained in the caverns of my brain.

 

I unrolled the towels on the sand before removing my shirt and diving into the water. Oliver splashed in behind me and we swam for awhile. I felt no sense of hurry or anxiety, though there were so many details I wanted to know. What became of your life since we last spoke? What of your wife and your children and all the things that made up who you were when you lived away from me? Where is your heart and what do I want, now that all the empty spaces, where all the versions of you once lived, have a chance of converging on the actual you, the one with soft wrinkles and sunspots and blond hair shot through with gray?

 

For once, now was not later and yesterday was much safer than today.

 

I sank under the waves, hoping the currents would set my thoughts straight. When my head broke through the water, I came face to face with a solid mass of muscle and wet, dark blond hair.

 

“Okay, shoot,” he said.

 

“Shoot what?”

 

“Don’t be a goose.”

 

I rubbed water from my face. “How long are you staying?”

 

He glanced up at the sky, the sun forcing him to squint, exposing the elegant crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes.

 

“Two weeks, for now.”

 

I made a mental calculation, not intending to be fatuous, but wanting, more than anything, to clarify the issue.

 

“One day here, four days at the convention,” I added quickly when he glanced down at me, eyebrow raised. “ What of the other nine days?”

His face lost the implacable bravado of a few moments ago before resuming with the same tone he used whenever he said, “Later,” or “Try again,” or “Maybe just for a little while.”

 

“I suppose it depends on things.”

 

“What things?”

 

He chuckled, his confidence flickering. “It depends on you.”

 

It wasn’t until that moment that I realized I was torturing him and it was enough. I reached out and hugged him to me, my hands slipping over the broad expanse of his back. He didn't hesitate to respond in kind, pulling me to him, the water making it easy for him to lift me off my feet. When he released me, his wet fingers tangled in my hair, damp tips running over my face like the tracing of a sculpture.

 

The kiss I foreswore earlier came in a hesitant caress, his lips just brushing against mine. It was electric, and the unexpected jolt caused me to pull back as if scalded. But his lips chased mine, and his arms pulled me back. What could I do but surrender, having already tested this desire so long ago, only to discover that iit had not waned?

 

We kissed languorously, becoming familiar with the concept of us again. All the details between, the incidentals and monumentals, would come to light in their own time. But this was another offshoot of our lives, another timeline and there was no hurry. This time, the clock wasn’t ticking against us.

 

**XXXXX**

 

We reclined on large beach towels, our legs buried in the warm sand. It clung to our skin and I relished its rough caress.

 

“How did your boys take the divorce?” I asked.

 

His face darkened but only momentarily, the shadow of a heavy time passing over him  “There was a kind of inevitability to it. Things were breaking down over the last few years.” He lay on his side, resting his head on his hand, elbow dug into the towel and sand. “They are older and divorce is not so uncommon among their peers.”

 

“But it’s not ideal.”

 

“Perhaps, but they have always been our priority so we made it as easy for them as possible. So far, they haven’t held it against us.”

 

“You’re fortunate in that.”

 

He shrugged. “It became a countdown, waiting for the boys to grow old enough. There were just too many things my ex-wife and I kept from each other. We hid more than we shared.”

 

“Did you ever tell her...about...well…?”

 

“About my experiences with men? I was honest with her.”

 

“What about me?”

 

He looked uncomfortable, his mask slipping again. “Not in the specifics, no. That time...with you...belongs only to me.”

 

I smiled, aware that I was now blushing.

 

“What would you hide from me if we were together?” I felt this was a monumental question. I’d never hid myself from anyone, not when it came to that. I’d learned long ago not to shove parts of myself away into the dark. They’d only twist and fester, eventually sickening me.

 

“Nothing. I’d never hide a thing from you.” Because you are me and I am you and I’d sooner hide my face from the sun than hide it from you. Is that it, Oliver? Is that what you meant to say?

 

We took another dip in the sea before drying off, taking the path back to the house. We’d never liked big speeches and I wouldn’t burden him with one but my mind was awash in his words and revelations. If I was honest about not hiding from him, then I had confessions of my own to make.

“I’m not completely unattached,” I blurted out

 

He nodded, picking his way carefully up the path. “I knew there was a risk and I respect that.”

 

“We’re not married yet,” I said, “But we’ve discussed it. You know, I’m not getting any younger.”

 

“Do you want to tell me about her?”

 

I shrugged. I had been seeing Patrizia for two years, between her ballet performances and my concerts, it felt like the two of us were always starting all over with each other. That might be why our connection was so compelling. I never had a chance to be bored of her, or to descend into mediocre domesticity. It was good with her, as good as things could get.

 

I considered Oliver, burrowing his fingers in the sand of the cliff while he climbed, as if he’d yank out the earth’s core with one good pull. Oliver was a conflagration next to Patrizia. With Oliver, I could burn. I already felt the heat between my shoulders, a coil of magma sliding down into my belly, pooling into a volcanic river that would erupt with a whisper, or a touch. It was sudden, the epiphany that Patrizia, too, would slide away into the sea of memory where all my other lovers who were not Oliver lived.

 

“Do you still want me to stay?” he asked, his fists turning white around sand that slipped helplessly from his grasp.

 

“Yes.” I answered, as instinctive as breathing. I turned towards him, careful to not to touch him for fear I would lose my concentration and express myself poorly. “I didn’t share Patrizia with you as a deterrent. You just need to know that I haven’t lived my life like a dragonfly in amber.” I didn’t tell him that this was exactly where’d I kept him, my pluperfect lover, frozen the window frame of my bedroom. “I’ve had lovers, many of them, some who mattered very much.”

 

He nodded, releasing the sand.

 

“Are you disappointed?” I pressed at length.

 

“You’ve had serious relationships. Who am I to talk? I was married and have children.”

 

“It was bound to be messy.”

 

“That’s not a problem.” He smiled, then shoved me gently on the shoulder with his. “I have an idea.”

 

His surge in mood was infectious. “What is it?”

 

“Let’s go out to dinner tonight. Just the two of us. A date of sorts. Unless you think it silly.”

 

I alighted instantly on the idea. “A date? With you? At our ripe old age?”

 

He laughed, similar to the spontaneous burst of humor at the belfry earlier in the week. “It seems fair. I don’t want the memory of us to get in the way of who we are.”

 

“A new place,” I said, with unrestrained excitement. “Somewhere we haven’t been before.”

 

“I’m in your hands,” he said, taking mine for emphasis before surprising me with a kiss on the wrist, a lingering one that spoke more of joy than of passion.

 

**XXXXX**

 

We drove to a beautiful restaurant on the sea at San Lorenzo al Mare, where we were seated overlooking the marina. The lights of the docks twinkled beneath the spindly masts of sailboats with their sails tucked under for the night. A breeze brought the smell of sand from the nearby cove, and the aroma of flower blossoms that grew swollen and heavy along the cliffs hanging over the sea.

 

“This must be something in the day time,” he said with real appreciation.

 

“It’s particularly beautiful when boats set out in the morning,” I answered, allowing the waiter to push my chair in for me. “Sailboats dot the horizon, the wind carrying them up and down the coast.”

 

“I’d love to see that.”

 

I leaned forward, toying with the cloth napkin. “We can take a short detour tomorrow, if you’d like.”

 

Oliver smiled before a waiter appeared. I asked for a bottle of the locally grown Pigato, looking to Oliver for his opinion, which he gave by way of a nod. “It depends how late we are tonight, I think,” he answered when the waiter left, a slight flush of color crawling up his neck. Hope glittered in his eyes and I struggled to swallow, my throat and lips gone dry as sandpaper.

 

“Or another day,” I said, attempting not to stare at the skin and hair exposed by the V of his dress shirt, trying not to dwell on the taste of him.

 

The bottle of white wine arrived. The waiter, an older man who worked with brisk competence, uncorked it, placing a small amount in the glass for me. I shook my head. “You try it, Oliver.”

 

He took the glass, swirling the liquid beneath his nose before taking a sip, nodding with approval. “This is very good.” My eyes fell on his lips as he sipped again, still full, now dotted with the flavor of wine and forced myself to look away.

 

The waiter filled our glasses and took our order. I barely paid attention to my _zuppa di pesce_ or _fusilli alla pescatora_.  I sensed a momentousness at the edge of our evening, in the way Oliver sat, leaning in feigned relaxation into his dinner chair, his hand caressing the glass of Pigato. He picked up the bread, describing the apartment he rented in the upper East Side of NYC, his work at Columbia, his upcoming book. But I sensed his mind was only half present. He was as taut as the string of a violin, waiting to be strummed and played. I was a pianist, and he’d have to forgive my clumsiness, but my fingers itched to rediscover the sound of that instrument.

 

“I’ve missed Italian cuisine. There are restaurants back home, some very good. But it’s not the same. Certainly nothing as fine as Mafalda’s cooking.” He set down his napkin, staring at me with the shadow of memories in his eyes.

 

“There is never any comparison with a home cooked meal.”

 

“You’re right. Nothing in the world compares to home.” He held my gaze and my thoughts flew in a thousand directions.

 

“Where’s home now, Oliver?” I asked finally, leaning forward over my empty dessert plate. “Where is this incomparable place?”

 

Oliver’s eyes became sharp, almost cruel, reminding me of those looks he once gave me, the ones I thought meant he was angry but really meant he liked me, wanted me but was too shy to say so. His foot, so quiet and inert throughout dinner, tapped mine, shoe against shoe, since were in public. But I filled in the blanks in my mind, the soft-soled foot, warm arch resting over mine, the toes tangled and searching. My home and his home were one and the same.

 

We paid, thanking the waiter, and left the restaurant with the stiff decorum of two people living in subtext. At first glance, we were just two old chums, catching up on old times. But the current was wild beneath the surface, its voraciousness burbling in ever-increasing intensity. I shook as I held the car fob. Oliver’s large hand closed over mine, tugging me towards him. His face, shrouded in shadow, only revealed the dimpled brightness of his eyes as he molded his body into mine, pressing me into the car door. I made to speak but his mouth was on mine and words became empty, futile devices.

 

It was breathtaking, nothing like any of the kisses I’d given and received all these years. His leg pressed between mine, hips and chest crushed together, hands sliding over each other’s necks, faces, shoulders - I lost track of it all. He nipped at my lips before invading me, tongue caressing tongue, long strokes of hunger lapping over me. I woke from my stupor and answered his fervor with a fire of my own. I kissed him back, exacting my fee for years and years of longing. I didn’t care who might see us in the paved lot. The moon cast its soft glow over cooled sands, people up and down the beach, inside, outside - I didn’t care. I had paid the price for his absence and now I wanted it all back with interest.

 

I drove us back after dinner with every cell wide open. Feverish, I was terrified like that first night I came to his room. There were no pot, nothing to dampen the senses, though Oliver was smoking one of my Galouises. Focusing very hard on the road ahead of me, he held the lit cigarette to my lips, the nicotine mingling with the taste of _genziana_ and Oliver’s mouth.

 

I willed the road to end, cursing myself for not relenting and just going to a place closer to home, Always overthinking, overplanning, never choosing the easiest path. Foolish, foolish Elio.

 

We finally coasted up the gravelly road, parking the car under a large walnut tree and shuffling inside the house like two thieves. I implored the creaking floors and rusty hinges not to give us away. It struck me that he’d likely hadn’t been with another man since me. Inconceivable and yet Oliver was too good to be untrue. We both were, though my way of goodness was less obvious, more in the preservation of a certain emotional intimacy than any physical fidelity. He sought me out precisely when he was free to do so and would not have tried had I insisted on any ties between me and anyone else.

 

We were back where we’d started earlier today, in the middle of my room, body tense with nerves and barely-forgotten feeling. I poked at my desire again by taking his hand in mine, splaying my fingers against his. “I’m nervous,” I whispered.

 

He folded his fingers so my hand was caught in his. “Me too. Maybe more than you.”

 

“We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to. We could talk,” I raised my eyes from our interlocked fingers to gaze into his eyes. “We didn’t talk before the first time.”

 

“We didn’t,” Oliver answered, caressing my fingers. “And I want to talk to you, every day, for a very long time. Just not right now.”

 

He tugged, pulling them and me forward. Our fingers were so tangled in the dark, I could not identify where his ended and mine began. I felt like the fish Anchise caught in the river that summer, hooked like that trout by a bait that was perfectly designed for me.

 

“Can I kiss you?” he asked, the echo so powerful, it reverberated through my chest, crushing my heart in its grip.

 

“Yes,” I blurted out. _Yes, you could tear me to pieces and I would let you consume me, all the while smiling that I had been fortunate enough to be your victim._

 

His name fell from my lips in a plaintive sigh before his lips swallowed the sound. I savored him all over again, setting aside my infantile tests in lieu of the desire itself. It blossomed like a thousand poppies under my skin, the precise ripening of want for Oliver, only Oliver. I had wanted so many before him and so many after him, wants that at time eclipsed that remembered desire for him. But there was a quality for my desire for Oliver which persisted, becoming sublimated in the passion I’d felt for others, transmuted like a light through changing prisms, changing shapes and resonances but always the same light.

 

My fingers crawled through his hair, thick and golden, my short nails scraping his scalp while his hand snaked behind my neck, pressing our bodies flush against each other. Our hardness skirted each other, crushed against each other’s bellies. I ached in an acute, painful way, a throb that pulsed in time with my rapid heart beat.

 

Our hands became fluid and fumbling at once, undoing buttons, flinging shirts from our shoulders, pooling pants at our feet. Our shoes were tangled in expensive pants-legs, mounds of clothing like tiny islands in an unseen sea. I kissed Oliver with a thirst I’d forgotten I was capable of, thirst and hunger and infinite longing for more than a memory. I was 17 again and the ghost I’d pined for solidified, becoming flesh and muscle and man. One man.

 

“I want you,” he mouthed against my lips. I answered with a gravelly _yes_. He pressed me backwards onto the bed, growling as he crawled over me. The bass of his voice reverberated through me as he laved and pinched my nipples, the flat of my stomach, the protrusion of my hips.

 

And when he said my name around my cock, the entire world shifted out of phase and I was back in my bed 21 years ago, being made love to for the first time by him. Oliver had been the only thing I knew.

 

I lifted myself on my elbows to watch him bobbing over my cock, my mouth watering at the sight. Wordlessly, through tugs and shimmies, I aligned myself to wrap my lips around his cock and we swallowed each other whole until tears spilled from our eyes. He groaned loudly, a sound of abandon that had never been duplicated by anyone I’d ever been with, as if he had been starving and was feasting on the last meal he’d have in a long while.

 

Except it wouldn’t be the last. We could have each other as much as we wanted if I could find a way to make it work.

 

I pulled out of his mouth before I came and surprised him by crawling over his body, kissing and biting a trail up his torso. I brought my lips to his, kissing him deeply before pulling back to gaze down on him. Beautiful Oliver, with skin hardened and cured by age and years of running, eyes still the color of youth and the sea, of summer and swimming pools. How much time had gone by, and yet it was as if he’d never left.

 

“Are you okay?” I asked, trying to keep my sentimentality from spilling out in an embarrassing cascade of devotion and gratitude.

 

“Very okay,” he said and the similarity of tone struck me instantly. He was overcome as well. I kissed him again, long and indulgently, our tongues a warm caress that nevertheless struck again and again until we were breathless. I pulled back and grasped the lube in my end table, liberally dousing his weepy cock until my hand and his shaft were glistening and slick.

 

“We have time enough for everything,” I said. “But I want this.”

 

“You can have whatever you want,” he answered, holding himself as I sank down over his shaft, taking him into myself with an ease I had not possessed the first times we’d been together. It gave the illusion of me possessing him but in fact, I was giving myself to him. Taking and giving, one and the same. Like him. Like me. His giant hands ran up my thighs, gripping my hips and lifted me off and onto him.

 

“Elio, Elio, Elio,” he groaned before pulling me down for a deep kiss which faltered as he climbed, hips bucking wildly. Without warning, he flipped me onto my back and drove into me with a fury that he had only possessed one other time, the last night we were together in Rome, as if he’d known at some level that it would be the last time we would make love to each other for a very long time. He pulled filthy words from my mouth, words he swallowed up and gave back to me between the plowing of his hips until he shook. I held my climax at bay so that I could watch his face metamorph into a conflagration of agony and ecstasy. With his last tremor, I came also also, until we both collapsed into a sagging mess of beating hearts and sticky sex.

 

He shifted to my side, head resting on my shoulder as our breathing and our hearts slowed, becoming synchronous.

 

“Are you happy?” he asked. I smiled at the variation of words from an earlier time, each exposing the insecurity that prompted them.

 

“I haven’t been this happy in a long time.” I pulled him to me and gave him a tired kiss.

 

He cupped my cheek in his hand, his thumb rubbing along my cheek bone. “One time, for me,” he whispered.

 

I turned towards him, his eyes bright with a feeling that disarmed me. “Elio.”

 

“Oliver.” His voice shook, his breath short and ragged. I tucked his head into the crook of my neck. His lips quickly found a spot and left a kiss there.

 

“What do we do now?” he asked.

 

I shrugged, his head bobbing with the movement. “Sleep, for one. Go to your conference, of course.”

 

“And then?”

 

He lay quiet against my shoulder, tense with expectation. I focused on his heaviness, the smell that intoxicated me, the saltiness of his skin. He was the same Oliver, but different. The edges of his glamour had softened, even become frayed with age, experience and insecurity. But I would take him as he was. Even if this night had been all we’d ever get, it would have been enough to last me to the end of my days. But I get to have more. And greedy creature that I was, I’d take it. I’d take all of him.

 

“And then…” I sighed, smiling into the darkness. “And then, we figure it out.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the delay in updating! I was away for 2 months in the most glorious place in the world. However, like most gorgeous places, being in the Appenines in Central Italy meant I was often without easy access to the internet. This was actually good for my soul but it also meant I as reduced to handwriting most of my story drafts in my notebook. I've only just transcribed this chapter here but I have others. How can I visit Italy and not have a wealth of stories about my boys?
> 
> One thing I was unable to do well was edit this chapter deeply. I like to type, set things aside, revisit them and edit them well before posting. So if there are pacing issues or spelling errors, forgive me in advance. As soon as I am State-side, I will give the chapter a good read-through and make better edits. If they are such that they change the direction of scenes or dialogue, I will post a note in my next chapter update.
> 
> Thank you for your patience and your messages! I will catch up to the ones in my inbox this week :).

**Author's Note:**

> I respond to all messages. Don't hesitate to point out mistakes or mischaracterizations. You can also find me on tumblr and instagram under everyforkedroad :).


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